John Kitzhaber wants an unprecedented fourth term as Oregon’s governor. As voters go to the polls this month, they must ask themselves if Dennis Richardson’s candidacy and Kitzhaber’s record and vision for the state are enough to make Kitzhaber worthy of the job.

While Kitzhaber, a 67-year-old Democrat, has disappointed us badly in the last few weeks, we still believe the answer is yes.

In addition to Richardson, the 65-year-old Republican, Kitzhaber is opposed by Libertarian Paul Grad, Constitution Party candidate Aaron Auer and the Pacific Green Party’s Jason Levin.

Kitzhaber’s greatest strength may be as a visionary. He wants Oregon and the people in it to be great, not merely good, and he’s been willing to rattle all the conventional cages in his efforts to get us there. There are times, however, when vision alone is not enough, and the results have served neither the governor nor the state well.

The Cover Oregon marketplace debacle is the clearest example of Kitzhaber’s missteps. Yes, the agency is a quasi-independent one over which he exercises more limited control. And yes, apparently those working at Cover Oregon have gone to some length to keep their difficulties private. The agency’s effort to hide Clyde Hamstreet’s scathing report about its failure is proof of that.

But Cover Oregon’s website, the tool that promised so much to Oregonians making their way into the health insurance market, failed to deliver. At all. Not one citizen was able to do the necessary research and actually purchase health insurance coverage through it. Rather, a host of facilitators, coordinators and others were required to get the job done, and apparently thousands of mistakes were made in the process. It remains to be seen just how expensive those mistakes will prove, and who will pick up the tab as a result.

Kitzhaber, as the man who is the driving force behind all current health care reform efforts hereabouts, has accepted responsibility for the site’s problems and acknowledged that he was warned about trouble ahead by Richardson. The governor now wants Cover Oregon’s work directly taken over by a formal state agency.

Going forward, Kitzhaber believes the state’s coordinated care organizations will save enough money to weather future federal reductions in Medicaid payments without having to decimate Oregon Health Plan (the state’s version of Medicaid) rolls. He may be right, but it will take more ongoing attention from him than he has sometimes shown.

Kitzhaber’s other great misstep involves his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes. While she is not on the state’s payroll, her influence on Oregon government has been extraordinary, and extraordinarily damaging. With a desk in the governor’s office, attendance at senior staff meetings and a private consulting business on the side, neither she nor the governor should have been surprised when accusations of influence peddling became public.

Kitzhaber’s response has been disappointing. He apparently is unperturbed by the notion that his affairs of the heart could become the stuff of late-night television jokes. He also should have better sense than to compare his relationship with Hayes to former Gov. Barbara Roberts’ relationship with her husband, the late Sen. Frank Roberts. Frank, like Barbara, was elected to his post by his fellow Oregonians; Hayes was chosen by a constituency of one.

And, Kitzhaber’s charge that stories about Hayes were somehow the work of anti-feminist opponents was an insult to every woman and man in this state.

The governor must assure Oregonians that Hayes’ involvement in state affairs is limited to polite private dinner conversation.

All that said, Kitzhaber has done more than a little good in his 12 years in office.

Locally, Oregon State University’s Cascades Campus arguably never would have gotten off the ground were it not for John Kitzhaber. He put money for the school in his budget at a time when even the state Board of Higher Education was not committed to it. OSU-Cascades fits into the governor’s vision for education in Oregon, and that’s a good thing for this region.

He’s had other concrete successes as well. Kitzhaber bucked his party and the unions that provide much of its support to push Public Employees Retirement System reform through the 2013 Legislature.

On the economic front, he is not willing to rush to support a large increase in the minimum wage. As he notes, unless it’s handled carefully, an increase could actually leave some Oregonians with less, not more, money to spend as state benefits disappear. He called a special legislative session to ensure that Nike, one of the state’s top two private employers, stayed put. He says a cut in the capital gains tax offers one of the best ways to bring much-needed new business to Oregon.

He also was the state’s most vocal supporter of the proposed Columbia River Crossing between Portland and Vancouver. We continue to believe he was right on that one — Oregon, and particularly Central Oregon, is reliant on trucking for most of its commercial traffic, and a major bottleneck on the state’s major freeway makes no sense.

And, as he did during his first two terms in office, the governor has pushed Oregonians to work collaboratively to solve some of their knottiest problems.

He was part of the effort to solve the water wars that have plagued Klamath County and the whole Klamath River basin in recent years. The agreement that resulted has served the county well, despite an ongoing drought. A separate agreement, also championed by the governor, among parties along the Columbia River assures more water for agriculture without harming endangered salmon.

If John Kitzhaber is a visionary, he’s also a tactical politician of considerable skill. PERS reform is a testament to that, as was his ability to persuade a broad spectrum of supporters to drop a series of divisive ballot measures in favor of a longer-term effort to reform the state’s tax structure.

Richardson, meanwhile, is an honest, well-meaning man. He has served his Southern Oregon district well in the state House of Representatives since 2002.

What he has not done is persuade us he has any particular vision of his own for Oregon. His campaign has been less about what he will do than what he won’t — he won’t be John Kitzhaber. That’s a thin reed on which to build the future of this state.

In a perfect world, Oregonians might get John Kitzhaber, with his vision and his tactical skills, as governor, and Dennis Richardson, with his buttoned-down attention to detail, as his chief administrator. This is not a perfect world, however, and voters must choose between the two men. Despite his missteps, we believe John Kitzhaber, warts and all, remains the best choice for this state.